There is a long-running research going in China to develop Rice hybrids tolerant to salinity or salt water called as Super-tough Sea Rice. There are many wild species that are tolerant to salinity but yielded only lesser tonnes that cannot be correlated to the investment made on the crop.

Development of salinity tolerant Rice hybrids is the need of the decade due to the rising population and decreasing area of cultivated land. Despite the availability of surplus salt water, the species tolerant to that condition is hardly found.

Yuan Longping, the godfather of Hybrid Rice in China, at the Qingdao Saline-Alkali Tolerant Rice Research And Development Center in Qingdao developed a unique hybrid in Rice that can answer to 200 million people around suffering from hunger.

This unique Rice Hybrid can yield 2.9 and 4 US tons per acre and is observed to be tolerant to pests and insects as well. This is because pests and insects cannot tolerate such a high saline conditions.

How is the Saline tolerant Rice Hybrid developed?

This hybrid is developed after years of crossbreeding, and genetic analysis, and trait selection. During the last summer, the hybrid was cultivated in full scale using the diluted seawater from the Yellow Sea, the body of water between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula.

Following on the success of the experiment, around 6 tonnes of the rice is sold in China at the price that is nearly 8 times the cost of normal rice. The reason for such a huge price is only the demand. But the price is expected to come down after the commercialisation.

People who consumed the rice are giving the feedback that it was like the rice they had back in his village.

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About Praveen PenugondaHave interests in multiple aspects and write articles on Technology, Lifestyle and Finance. Tracking developments since the launch of Nokia 1100 and completion of Human Genome Project